Vortex Theatre to stage August Wilson's 'Jitney'

Before Uber, before Lyft, there were jitney cabs — unlicensed, for-hire vehicles that sprang up to serve inner-city neighborhoods that commercial taxis preferred to bypass.

In Pittsburgh, regular cabbies refused to travel to the Hill District of the 1970s.

The residents turned to jitneys — the gypsy cabs operating within the community.

Pittsburgh native August Wilson’s wrote his 1979 group portrait “Jitney,” opening at the Vortex Theatre from March 8-24, in tribute to the lives of these drivers.

The Hill District was home to Black and Jewish residents. Wilson rapidly introduces his audience to the drivers: the recently returned Vietnam veteran Darnell (called Youngblood by the other drivers), who is determined to build a new life for himself and his family; the solid and easy-going Korean War veteran Doub; the gossipy hothead Turnbo and the alcoholic Fielding. Flamboyant numbers runner Shealy isn’t a driver, but he uses the station’s phone as his base of operations.

These characters have colorful pasts, strong personalities, a trunk load of regrets and a complicated but resilient camaraderie. In other words: These are August Wilson people.

Trouble erupts when Turnbo insinuates himself into Youngblood’s love life. He tells Youngblood’s girlfriend Rena that he has been spotted around town with her sister when he should have been at home with their son.

Despite his protestations of innocence, Rena accuses Youngblood, who has been acting secretively and has taken grocery money to pay a vague “debt.” Youngblood attacks Turnbo for causing trouble, and Turnbo pulls a gun on him, threatening to shoot him. But station boss Becker intervenes.

Becker’s son Clarence (nicknamed Booster) is released early from prison after serving 20 years for the murder of his college girlfriend, a white woman who had falsely accused him of rape. Becker has not visited his son in prison once. Booster arrives at the station hoping to reconcile with his father.

“The father and son dynamic is very compelling to me,” said director Angela Littleton.

“Now the city is threatening to tear down the whole block of buildings and close the company,” she added.

These characters populate Wilson’s celebrated “Pittsburgh Cycle,” the 10-play, decade-by-decade rumination on the 20th century African American experience that includes “Fences,” “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and “Jitney.”

“It’s about trying to achieve the American dream,” Littleton said, “and how each of them succumb to the barriers or appear to be successful.”

The playwright’s alums reads like a who’s who of prominent Black actors: Viola Davis, Angela Bassett, Denzel Washington, Courtney B. Vance, Charles S. Dutton and Laurence Fishburne have all acted in Wilson’s plays. Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1987 and 1990.